News

Hina presents first e-car with sodium-ion battery pack

In the field of battery technology, the consensus is that lithium as a raw material should only serve as a bridging technology. The disadvantages of the valuable chemical element are too great. Now the battery manufacturer Hina is apparently setting a shining example by presenting the first electric car with a battery based on sodium. Instead of a conventional lithium-ion battery, a sodium-ion battery is supposed to work under the hood. Disadvantages are not apparent, at least at first glance.

Is Hina heralding a new age?

When it comes to battery technology, the automotive industry is currently in agreement. For example, all serious vehicles rely on lithium-ion batteries. Even though the first manufacturers are attempting to reduce the amount of lithium in their batteries, the raw material, which is both controversial and sought-after, still accounts for a large proportion of battery production. Hina is now preparing to launch a small but potentially important revolution with its Jac Sehol-E10X. The compact prototype comes with a sodium-ion battery, according to a report from news portal Cnevpost, making it the world’s first electric car to do so.

No obvious disadvantages to lithium-ion technology

The 25 kWh battery is said to make a range of up to 250 km possible in the small city runabout. Given the vehicle’s size and the fact that it does not use lithium, that is an astonishingly good value. Hina also gives reason to marvel at the service life. Between 2,000 and 3,000 charging cycles are said to be possible. Since the range is quite large here, this value should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The sodium-ion battery also cuts a good figure in terms of weather resistance. On paper, it should still offer a battery capacity of 90 percent even at -20 degrees Celsius. The charging performance also sounds impressive. According to the report, the battery should already be able to be charged from 0 to 80 percent within a quarter of an hour.

Mass suitability of sodium-ion battery seems given

Probably the most decisive advantage of the latest battery premiere on the part of carmakers may be the cost of battery production. Since sodium does not suffer from the availability problems that lithium does, sodium-ion batteries are much cheaper to produce. What works in the compact Jac Sehol-E10X with battery from Hina does not seem to be a problem in larger electric cars. At first glance, the 25 kWh offered by the small city car may seem tiny. But much more exciting than the specific battery capacity is, of course, the energy density. And at 120 Wh per kg, this is absolutely standard on the market and only slightly below that of lithium-ion batteries.

According to Cnevpost, Hina is already developing batteries with an even better energy density. This would then be up to 155 Wh per kg. Since this technology is currently still in its infancy, it should be possible to reach the 200 Wh per kg that modern lithium-ion batteries in electric cars are capable of. As a courageous Chinese company, Hina is treading an exciting path. After all, it is the first company in the People’s Republic to manufacture sodium-ion batteries with a size of up to 1 MWh. In a currently planned battery factory, the company, which appropriately translates from Chinese as “sea salt,” aims to produce a total of 30 GWh of sodium-ion storage per year.

Hina shows us the future

Smartphones, power stations, electric cars, and and. Today, hardly anything works without rechargeable batteries. But lithium deposits worldwide are coveted and finite. For this reason, resourceful researchers began looking for alternatives at an early stage. With sodium, they may now have found one. At least Hina shows us that there is no need to compromise on sodium-based batteries. Quite the opposite. Since they are cheaper to produce and there is no need to worry about the extraction of the raw material, they could be the batteries of the future. We are curious.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

Related Articles

Neue Antworten laden...

Avatar of Basic Tutorials
Basic Tutorials

Gehört zum Inventar

9,873 Beiträge 2,616 Likes

In the field of battery technology, the consensus is that lithium as a raw material should only serve as a bridging technology. The disadvantages of the valuable chemical element are too great. Now the battery manufacturer Hina is apparently setting a shining example by presenting the first electric car with a battery based on sodium. … (Weiterlesen...)

Antworten Like

Back to top button